A quiet revolution in 2024 will put mainstream culture back at the heart of how brands grow.

2023 was the year we passed ‘peak purpose’ and Adland finally woke up to the vital importance of connecting with real people’s lives.

In 2024, more brands will be trying to connect with authentic, mainstream culture.

It is an idea that launched The Ninety-Niners three years ago; to be on the side of the real people we serve, not the marketers and brand owners that pay our bills. That means speaking with people on their terms, understanding their challenges and making them part of the creative process.

And it means leaving brand ego and societal biases at the door and facing up to some uncomfortable truths. People don’t care about your brand. They don’t care about your advertising. They certainly don’t care about your highly awarded, purpose-driven campaign. They care about their lives, their families, their communities, and their culture. 

What is culture?

Culture is ‘the way of life for a particular group of people’. It is pretty much the sum total of all the stuff we care about, passed down the generations, made manifest in ideas, habits, attitudes, codes, behaviours, rituals, beliefs, art and institutions.

Culture evolves, with the chunks of ideas that Richard Dawkins coined ‘memes’, mutating and competing with one another in ways that are analogous to genes in evolution by natural selection.

Culture is perhaps the most powerful thing on earth, capable of driving individuals into extraordinary acts of kindness or violence. And it can also be the most trivial, such as the ongoing debate as to whether it is ever acceptable to put pineapple on pizza. (Spoiler alert - it is). 

Cultural marketing 

Very often, “cultural marketing” is focused on big passion points like music and sport. Of course, these are important ways for brands to be present and participate in things that people care about deeply.

At its best, brands move beyond simply badging and sponsoring, and make a genuine contribution. Red Bull doesn’t sponsor F1, it is the most successful team in the world. Paddy Power is not badging sport, it is fuelling banter that adds to the sports fans’ experience. 

Mainstream culture in marketing 

But culture is more than arts and sports. In truth, all marketing exists in, moves through and to some degree helps to create culture. With TikTok now becoming a key part of most brand plans, the need to create ideas that feel authentic and fuel real content has never been stronger. In a medium where didactic brand advertising simply does not fly, the onus is on us to create ideas that grab attention, hook into existing behaviours and encourage participation.

In a current campaign for Dole, we are hooking into the ‘pineapple on pizza’ debate to raise awareness of our new tinned pineapple, this time by suggesting adding it to your full English Breakfast. National dishes are sacred embodiments of national culture and by playfully pushing at the boundaries of cultural acceptance, we have created Dole’s most engaging campaign ever.

My favourite campaign of 2023 is Mcdonald's Raise Your Arches, which combines different aspects of culture in a wonderful piece of populist entertainment. Beneath the nostalgic music is the shared cultural idea that a ‘cheeky Big Mac’ is a symbol of letting go and doing what you want to do, not what you should do. The Christmas version contains even more nods to national culture, by paying homage to the shared festive experiences of Love Actually, office parties, nativity plays and karaoke. 

Getting under the skin of culture 

Getting beyond the big shiny cultural artefacts of music and sport, and into the nitty-gritty of mainstream culture, is not easy.  It is vital to have authentic and diverse voices making the work, and we’re proud to be an agency that is over 90% state school educated. But however representative you might be, it is only by listening, observing and participating with real people that authentic cultural nuggets emerge.

In 2024, The Ninety-Niners is undertaking a national project to get under the skin of modern mainstream Britain. More than a one-and-done piece of research, it will establish an always-on process for understanding and connecting with the real people we serve. The aim is to foster an environment of openness and curiosity about culture, to create a systematic approach to overcoming cultural bias and to identify the things that matter to real people. 

There is no moment when you ‘get’ culture. It is always evolving, nuanced and varied. It is both shared across communities and different for individuals. But it is the rich world of real lives in which brands need to live.